REVIEW: Teaching Children Who Find Reading Difficult

Rasinski, Padak, and Fawcett have contributed significantly to the lexicon of the reading teacher in their book, Teaching Children Who Find Reading Difficult through their use of both research and activities.  They begin the book discussing current findings from researchers to help the reader understand the framework from which they will be working for the rest of the book.  Their perspective can be summarized in one word:  individualization.  If a student isn't able to complete an activity at the same rate or success rate as his classmates, then it is the teacher's job to find another activity for that student and even for the entire class.  

In explaining how students learn how to read, the authors really break down how students integrate any new information into their own understanding.  They believe that conceptual change must occur when a student learns something new; this change occurs through predicting, testing, and confirming.  Understanding a student's cultural logic in addition to promoting conceptual change are two elements that teachers must maintain an awareness of and a sensitivity to which can be difficult if a teacher has a different cultural background than the students.

The book also offers many teaching strategies that can be used for teaching reading, writing, and in any other subject matter where information has to be summarized or categorized.  A few of the activities that I especially liked were the following:  

• Direct Reading-Thinking Activity:  The teacher asks questions at particular places during a reading to gauge students' understanding.
• "Save the last word for me":  The students take notes as they read, share one with people in their small group, and at the end, the student who shared the idea gets to have the last word on the idea.
• Herringbone:  An organizational chart.

Overall, I'd recommend this book to any teacher who needs new ideas to reach their students whether the students are struggling with reading or if they simply need new teaching strategies.